Newsweek's Eleanor Clift on Al Gore: 'Hooray That He is Back'
--12/27/2006

the Steven P.J. Wood Senior Fellow and Vice President for Research and Publications

1.Newsweek's Eleanor Clift on Al Gore: 'Hooray That He is Back'
On the McLaughlin Group's "2006 Year-End Awards" aired over the Christmas weekend, Newsweek's Eleanor Clift hailed Al Gore for the "Best Comeback," trumpeting him: "Al Gore, who is now in contention as a possible presidential candidate and who is leading a campaign to recognize the potential danger of global warming. Hooray that he is back." After giving her "Enough Already!" distinction to "Bush and Cheney," Clift championed Democrat James Webb as her "Person of the Year" at the end of the show: "Virginia Senator-elect James Webb, the former combat veteran, novelist won the race and has the stamina and the imagination to help lead the campaign to get this country out of Iraq."

2.Rosen: 'When You Finally Give Up on Couric, Go Conservative'
In "an open letter to Sean McManus, President, CBS News and Sports," Denver radio talk show host Mike Rosen, proposed in a Friday Rocky Mountain News column, that McManus rescue the third-place CBS Evening News by delivering a newscast conservatives would watch. "When you finally give up on Couric," Rosen suggested, "go conservative." Rosen listed how "Rather was liberal, Brokaw was liberal, Jennings was liberal. Brian Williams and Charles Gibson, your current competition on ABC and NBC, are liberal. And Katie's liberal. So break the mold. Let Williams and Gibson split the liberal audience and you'll have the conservative audience all to yourself, including millions of new viewers who long ago gave up on network news." Rosen expressed what must be heresy inside CBS News: "Fox would be a good model for you. I know this is hard for inbred liberals to understand, but Fox's news is more fair and balanced than yours. They skew right of center less than you, ABC and NBC skew left of center. You could probably have gotten Hume for a lot less than you paid Couric, and he'd have been much better."

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On the McLaughlin Group's "2006 Year-End Awards" aired over the Christmas weekend, Newsweek's Eleanor Clift hailed Al Gore for the "Best Comeback," trumpeting him: "Al Gore, who is now in contention as a possible presidential candidate and who is leading a campaign to recognize the potential danger of global warming. Hooray that he is back."

After giving her "Enough Already!" distinction to "Bush and Cheney," Clift championed Democrat James Webb as her "Person of the Year" at the end of the show: "Virginia Senator-elect James Webb, the former combat veteran, novelist won the race and has the stamina and the imagination to help lead the campaign to get this country out of Iraq."

In "an open letter to Sean McManus, President, CBS News and Sports," Denver radio talk show host Mike Rosen proposed in a Friday Rocky Mountain News column, that McManus rescue the third-place CBS Evening News by delivering a newscast conservatives would watch. "When you finally give up on Couric," Rosen suggested, "go conservative." Rosen listed how "Rather was liberal, Brokaw was liberal, Jennings was liberal. Brian Williams and Charles Gibson, your current competition on ABC and NBC, are liberal. And Katie's liberal. So break the mold. Let Williams and Gibson split the liberal audience and you'll have the conservative audience all to yourself, including millions of new viewers who long ago gave up on network news." Rosen expressed what must be heresy inside CBS News: "Fox would be a good model for you. I know this is hard for inbred liberals to understand, but Fox's news is more fair and balanced than yours. They skew right of center less than you, ABC and NBC skew left of center. You could probably have gotten Hume for a lot less than you paid Couric, and he'd have been much better."

Rosen, a talk host for KOA Radio, was a judge this year for the MRC's "Best Notable Quotables of 2006: The Nineteenth Annual Awards for the Year's Worst Reporting." Winning quotes are listed in item #3 below. For the awards online, most with audio/video: www.mrc.org

An excerpt from Rosen's December 22 column, "CBS should take a right," which I first saw highlighted in a Friday NewsBusters posting by Noel Sheppard:

Dear Mr. McManus:

I don't have to tell you that things have changed a lot since the glory days of CBS News when it sat atop the ratings and Walter Cronkite was "the most trusted man in America." Back then there were only a handful of over-the-air broadcast channels and the Big Three networks presided over something of a shared monopoly in early evening news. TV was in its adolescence and viewers were less sophisticated about the medium. Although there were fewer gadgets (not even videotape), newscasts had more substance.

Unfortunately, CBS News has been mired in last place behind NBC and ABC in recent years. Your response has been to hire Katie Couric to "perk up" your evening newscast. That was a mistake. Although she scored some good ratings numbers during her first week, this was likely a flash-in-the-pan reaction to a big promotional campaign and viewer curiosity. In the November sweeps, she's settled into a "distant third," as Variety recently phrased it....

But all is not lost. When you finally give up on Couric, I have a rescue plan if you're willing to take a chance. Really, what have you got to lose?

Here it is: go conservative. Not right wing, mind you. Just mainstream conservative. Couric's nightly audience is about 7 million. There are at least 20 million (that's the size of Rush Limbaugh's radio audience) American grown-ups who are sick and tired of the pervasive liberal bias that dominates the so-called "old" mass media. They'd also like a little more substance.

Rather was liberal, Brokaw was liberal, Jennings was liberal. Brian Williams and Charles Gibson, your current competition on ABC and NBC, are liberal. And Katie's liberal. So break the mold. Let Williams and Gibson split the liberal audience and you'll have the conservative audience all to yourself, including millions of new viewers who long ago gave up on network news. It's called product differentiation. Yes, the Fox News Channel skews conservative, but they're on cable and Brit Hume's Special Report has only 2 million viewers, which is pretty good for a cable channel. Just ask CNN and MSNBC.

As a matter of fact, Fox would be a good model for you. I know this is hard for inbred liberals to understand, but Fox's news is more fair and balanced than yours. They skew right of center less than you, ABC and NBC skew left of center. You could probably have gotten Hume for a lot less than you paid Couric, and he'd have been much better. OK, he's not as perky, but he has gravitas.

Change your agenda. Don't obsess on bad news. When you criticize institutions and public figures, don't just attack from the left. Say some good things about business and capitalism, and some critical things about labor unions. Try being more skeptical of environmental activists and global warming hype. Make fun of Cindy Sheehan and Michael Moore the way you do of conservatives.

This will mean, of course, that you'll have to turn your newsroom upside down. Change the culture. Inject some conservative blood. You could call it diversity. Reacting to Richard Nixon's re-election in 1972, The New Yorker's film critic Pauline Kael ironically declared that she couldn't believe he won, since no one she knew voted for him. There's a message there. Get some editors with a different viewpoint, who travel in broader intellectual circles. You know those young people behind the scenes who help produce shows and write copy? They don't all have to be rubber-stamped, idealistic, "progressive" journalism school graduates who want to change the world. Hire a few interns from The Weekly Standard. Get a White House reporter who doesn't hate George W. Bush.

You get the idea. It could propel CBS to the top of the nightly news ratings. And it might just be good for America, too

The winning quotes in the MRC's "Best Notable Quotables of 2006: The Nineteenth Annual Awards for the Year's Worst Reporting."

The Media Research Center's annual awards issue provides a compilation of the most outrageous and/or humorous news media quotes from 2006 (December 2005 through November 2006). To determine this year's winners, a panel of 58 radio talk show hosts, magazine editors, columnists, editorial writers and media observers each selected their choices for the first, second and third best quote from a slate of five to eight quotes in each category. First place selections were awarded three points, second place choices two points, with one point for the third place selections. Point totals are listed in the brackets at the end of the attribution for each quote. Each judge was also asked to choose a "Quote of the Year" denoting the most outrageous quote of 2006.

A list of the judges, who were generous with their time, appears in item #4 below.

The MRC's Brent Baker and Rich Noyes, along with Tim Graham and Geoff Dickens, selected the quotes for the ballot. Michelle Humphrey, Karen Hanna and Kristine Looney distributed and counted the ballots and then produced the numerous audio and video clips that accompany the Web-posted version. Rich Noyes assembled this issue and Michael Gibbons posted the entire package on the MRC's Web site where it appears with RealPlayer and Windows Media video, as well as MP3 audio, for all the quotes from television shows: www.mrc.org This year, MS Word and Corel WordPerfect files of the entire text of the issue, are also available at the above link.

For an Adobe Acrobat PDF that matches the eight-page hard copy version: www.mrc.org

Now, the winning quotes in the 17 award categories:

Tin Foil Hat Award for Crazy Conspiracy Theories

Anchor Katie Couric: "Gas is the lowest it's been all year, a nationwide
average of $2.23 a gallon. It hasn't been that low since last Christmas. But is
this an election-year present from President Bush to fellow Republicans?"
Reporter Anthony Mason: "...Gas started going down just
as the fall campaign started heating up. Coincidence? Some drivers don't think
so."
Man in a car: "And I think it's basically a ploy to
sort of get the American people to think, well, the economy is going good, let's
vote Republican."
-- CBS Evening News, October 16. As Mason spoke, the camera zoomed in on the
driver's bumper sticker, "GOP: Grand Oil Party." [72 points]

Blue State Brigade Award for Campaign Reporting

"Vote Democratic, Earn More."
-- Headline in the May 1 U.S. News & World Report's table of contents, pointing to a story about a campaign to increase the minimum wage. [59 points]

Madness of King George Award for Bush Bashing

Anchor Wolf Blitzer: "Let's get some words of wisdom from Jack Cafferty. He's in New York right now. Jack?"
CNN's Jack Cafferty: "I don't know about wisdom, but you'll get a little outrage. We better all hope nothing happens to Arlen Specter, the Republican head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, because he might be all that's standing between us and a full-blown dictatorship in this country....Does it concern you that your phone company may be voluntarily providing your phone records to the government without your knowledge or your permission? If it doesn't, it sure as hell ought to...."
Blitzer: "Words of wisdom, as I said, Jack, outraged, as you clearly are. Thanks very much."
-- CNN's The Situation Room, May 11. [77 points]

Bring Back the Iron Curtain Award

"When outsiders think of Cuba, it's often the lack of political freedoms and economic power that comes to mind. Cubans who have chosen to stay on the island, however, are quick to point out the positives: safe streets, a rich and accessible cultural life, a leisurely lifestyle to enjoy with family and friends....For all its flaws, life in Castro's Cuba has its comforts, and unknown alternatives are not automatically more attractive....Many foreigners consider it propaganda when Castro's government enumerates its accomplishments, but many Cubans take pride in their free education system, high literacy rates and top-notch doctors. Ardent Castro supporters say life in the United States, in contrast, seems selfish, superficial, and
-- despite its riches -- ultimately unsatisfying."
-- Associated Press writer Vanessa Arrington in an August 4 dispatch, "Some Cubans enjoy comforts of communism." [83 points]

Slam Uncle Sam Award

"Our government had turned its energy and attention away from upholding the rule of law and toward creating law-free zones at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, Haditha, and other places around the world. And let's not forget the sustained assault on women's reproductive freedom and the hijacking of public policy by religious fundamentalism."
-- New York Times legal reporter Linda Greenhouse in a June 9 speech at Harvard's Radcliffe Institute. [61 points]

Damn Those Conservatives Award

"It [Dean's book, Conservatives Without Conscience] deals with psychological principles that are frightening and that may have faced other nations at other times in -- Germany and Italy in the '30s coming to mind in particular. How does it apply now? And to what degree should it scare us?...This whole edifice requires an enemy -- communism, al-Qaeda, Democrats, me, whoever -- for the Two-Minute Hate....Are you actually saying here they [conservative Republicans] would set up, encourage, terrorism from other countries to set them up as a bogeyman to have again that group to hate here, that group to more importantly be afraid of here?...This all seems to require not merely venality or immorality, but a kind of amorality where morals don't enter into it at all....You've been at one of the central moments of history in the 20th century. What kind of danger
-- are we facing a legitimate threat to the concept of democracy in this country?"
-- MSNBC's Keith Olbermann to ex-Nixon White House lawyer John Dean, who claimed in his book that modern conservatives are moving the Republican Party toward "authoritarianism," July 10 Countdown. [73 points]

Terrorists Have Rights Too Award for Condemning "Domestic Spying"

"NSA bombshell: A new report that the government is secretly tracking your phone calls, seeking information on every call made in the U.S. The war on terror vs. your privacy."
-- ABC's Diane Sawyer opening the May 11 Good Morning America. Later, ABC's on-screen graphic warned: "Big Brother: Why is NSA Tracking Your Calls?" [71 points]

Drowning Polar Bear Award for Promoting Gore's Inconvenient "Truth"

Katie Couric: "In this movie, at different turns you're funny, vulnerable, disarming, self-effacing, and someone said after watching it, quote, 'If only he was like this before, maybe things would've turned out differently in 2000.'"
Al Gore: "Well, I benefit from low expectations...."
Couric: "What do you see happening in say 15 to 20 years or even 50 years if nothing changes?"
Gore: "...Sea-level increases of 20 feet or more worldwide. Of course, Florida and Louisiana and Texas are particularly vulnerable. The San Francisco Bay area, Manila. And we have seen the impact of a couple hundred thousand refugees from an environmental crisis. [Footage of Hurricane Katrina] Imagine 100 million or 200 million."
Couric: "Even Manhattan would be in deep water, right?"
Gore: "Yes, in fact the World Trade Center Memorial site would be underwater....Unfortunately, Mother Nature is weighing in very powerfully and very loudly."
-- NBC's Today, May 24. [109 points]

Pain at the Pump Award for Bashing "Big Oil"

Correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi: "They're used to living on fixed incomes, but now skyrocketing gas prices are forcing seniors to make difficult choices. Some are cutting back on medicine, others say they're eating less. [To retiree Delbert Osborne] What do you think when you fill up your car with gasoline now?"
Delbert Osborne: "I think, 'Have I got enough money to pay for all this and still get a loaf of bread?'"
Alfonsi: "Fortunately, 91-year-old Delbert Osborne doesn't drive that much anymore. He relies on Meals on Wheels, a group that's also in a squeeze. Volunteer drivers, most who are retirees on fixed incomes, are dropping out every day."
Volunteer: "Do they eat or do they help someone else? You know, that's a hard decision for them to make."
-- CBS Evening News, May 1. [79 points]

Media Hero Award

"You can see it in the crowds. The thrill, the hope. How they surge toward him. You're looking at an American political phenomenon. In state after state, in the furious final days of this crucial campaign, Illinois Senator Barack Obama has been the Democrat's not-so-secret get-out-the-vote weapon. He inspires the party faithful, and many others, like no one else on the scene today...And the question you can sense on everyone's mind, as they listen so intently to him, is he the one? Is Barack Obama the man, the black man, who could lead the Democrats back to the White House and maybe even unite the country?...Everywhere he goes, people want him to run for President, especially in Iowa, cradle of presidential contenders. Around here, they're even naming babies after him."
-- Co-anchor Terry Moran profiling Obama on ABC's Nightline, November 6. [85 points]

Barbra Streisand Political IQ Award for Celebrity Vapidity

"No matter what the greatest tyrant in the world, the greatest terrorist in the world, George W. Bush says, we're here to tell you: Not hundreds, not thousands, but millions of the American people, millions support your revolution, support your ideas, and we are expressing our solidarity with you."
-- Singer/activist Harry Belafonte to Venezuela's left-wing President Hugo Chavez during a televised rally on January 8, in a clip shown the following day on FNC's Hannity & Colmes. [81 points]

Politics of Meaninglessness Award for the Silliest Analysis

"Finally tonight, the Winter Games. Count me among those who don't like 'em and won't watch 'em. In fact, I figure when Thomas Paine said, 'These are the times that try men's souls,' he must have been talking about the start of another Winter Olympics. Because they're so trying, maybe over the next three weeks we should all try, too. Like, try not to be incredulous when someone attempts to link these games to those of the ancient Greeks, who never heard of skating or skiing. So try not to laugh when someone says these are the world's greatest athletes, despite a paucity of blacks that makes the Winter Games look like a GOP convention."
-- Bryant Gumbel on HBO's Real Sports, Feb. 7. [72 points]

Good Morning Morons Award

"Some of the values, depending on your perspective... may be deemed wholesome, but in other ways, I think, people will see this community as eschewing diversity and promoting intolerance....Do you think the tenets of the community might result in de facto segregation as a result of some of the beliefs that are being espoused by the majority of the residents there?...You can understand how people would hear some of these things and be like, wow, this is really infringing on civil liberties and freedom of speech and right to privacy and all sorts of basic tenets that this country was founded on. Right?"
-- NBC's Katie Couric on the March 3 Today, questioning Domino's Pizza founder Tom Monaghan and real-estate developer Paul Marinelli, who are building a community based on Catholic values in Florida. [79 points]

Cranky Dinosaur Award for Trashing the New Media

"A past President, bullied and sandbagged by a monkey posing as a newscaster, finally lashed back....The nation's marketplace of ideas is being poisoned by a propaganda company so blatant that Tokyo Rose would've quit....As with all the other nefariousness and slime of this, our worst presidency since James Buchanan, he [President Bush] is having it done for him, by proxy. Thus, the sandbag effort by Fox News Friday afternoon."
-- Keith Olbermann referring to Bill Clinton's interview with Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace, MSNBC's Countdown, September 25. [90 points]

State of Denial Award for Refusing to Acknowledge Liberal Bias

Ex-CBS anchor Dan Rather: "We had a lot, a lot, of corroboration of what we broadcast about President Bush's military record. It wasn't just the documents. But it's a very old technique used, that when those who don't like what you're reporting believe it can be hurtful, then they look for the weakest spot and attack it, which is fair enough. It's a diversionary technique."
CNN's Larry King: "You're saying that was a fair report, I mean that was
-- you believe that report to this day?"
Rather: "Do I believe the truth of the story? Absolutely.
-- Discussing Rather's 2004 60 Minutes story that relied on forged documents to challenge Bush's National Guard record, CNN's Larry King Live, July 12. [102 points]

Former Washington Post reporter Thomas Edsall: "I agree that the -- whatever you want to call it, mainstream media -- presents itself as unbiased when, in fact, there are built into it many biases and they are overwhelmingly to the left."
Host Hugh Hewitt: "Well, that's very candid....Given that number of reporters out there, is it ten to one Democrat to Republican? Twenty to one Democrat to Republican?"
Edsall: "It's probably in the range of 15 to 25:1 Democrat....There is a real difficulty on the part of the mainstream media being sympathetic, or empathetic, whatever the word would be, to the kind of thinking that goes into conservative approaches to issues. I think the religious right has been treated as sort of an alien world."
-- Exchange on Hugh Hewitt's syndicated radio show September 21, audio later posted at TownHall.com. [96 points]

Quote of the Year

"It wasn't supposed to be this way. You weren't supposed to be graduating into an America fighting a misbegotten war in a foreign land. You weren't supposed to be graduating into a world where we are still fighting for fundamental human rights, whether it's the rights of immigrants to start a new life, or the rights of gays to marry, or the rights of women to choose. You weren't supposed to be graduating into a world where oil still drove policy and environmentalists have to fight relentlessly for every gain. You weren't. But you are. And for that, I'm sorry."
-- From New York Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr.'s May 21 graduation address at the State University of New York at New Paltz, shown on C-SPAN May 27.

In recognition of their time and effort, a listing of the names and affiliations of the judges for the "Best Notable Quotables of 2006: The Nineteenth Annual Awards for the Year's Worst Reporting."

As explained in item #3 above, the panel of 58 radio talk show hosts, magazine editors, columnists, editorial writers and media observers received a ballot and each selected their choices for the first, second and third best quote from a slate of five to eight quotes in each category.

In alphabetical order, the award judges for the "Best Notable Quotables of 2006: The Nineteenth Annual Awards for the Year's Worst Reporting."

- Lee Anderson, Associate Publisher, Chattanooga Times Free Press

- Chuck Asay, editorial cartoonist, The Gazette in Colorado Springs

- Brent H. Baker, MRC's Vice President for Research and Publications; Editor of CyberAlert and Editor-at-Large of NewsBusters blog

Support CyberAlert and the work of the MRC with a tax-deductible year-end donation. We can provide CyberAlerts -- as well as all of the MRC's publications and sites -- as free services only because of the thousands of concerned conservatives who support the MRC financially each year and make possible the unique research operation behind the MRC's ongoing efforts to document, expose and neutralize liberal media bias. Please consider a donation and demonstrate that CyberAlert readers are committed to the MRC's mission and value the products we provide and the impact of the evidence we gather.

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